The Leadership Playbook for the Next Decade Has Already Been Written— -- Most Leaders Just Haven't Read It

How to Lead Through Layoffs, Disruption, and Uncertainty with Vertical Leadership Development

Today's leaders face a paradox: record profits alongside mass layoffs.

In January 2026, Amazon announced it was laying off 16,000 corporate employees—on top of the roughly 14,000 corporate roles it cut in October 2025, eliminating about 30,000 corporate jobs in under four months at one of the world’s most profitable companies. And Amazon isn’t alone. Pinterest is cutting about 15% of its workforce as part of an AI-focused restructuring. And now Dow has joined them, cutting about 4,500 jobs—about 13% of its workforce—while shifting to AI and automation in a bid to boost profits by at least $2 billion. The pattern is clear: strong financial performance, aggressive AI investment, and mass layoffs are no longer contradictions—they increasingly coexist as the new normal.

If you’re a leader watching this unfold, you’re probably asking yourself: How do I support my team through this? How do I keep people engaged when they’re afraid they’re next? And how do I develop myself and my people when the ground keeps shifting?

We are standing at an inflection point.

The next decade will bring disruption that makes the past few years look like a warm-up. Political forces are reshaping workplace policies overnight. Artificial intelligence is rewriting job descriptions faster than HR can post them. Corporate restructuring has become a quarterly event. The unspoken contract between employer and employee—the one that promised stability in exchange for loyalty—has been quietly shredded.

Meanwhile, your people are disrupted by change in ways they may not be telling you. Many are quietly quitting—their bodies show up, but their hearts and souls are elsewhere. Employee engagement is suffering because you’re not getting the best from your people. You won’t until you prioritize workplace culture and create an environment where people actually belong.

There’s also immense pressure on leaders to do the right thing—even when forces are outside your control. You can’t simply ignore what’s happening in the world because it impacts your reputation. Take immigration, for example. Leaders can’t cherry-pick which issues to address solely on the financial bottom line, because people impact it too. Caring for your people means caring for the ones inside your organization—your employees—and the ones outside—your customers. Silence or selective concern doesn’t go unnoticed.

If you’re a leader trying to support your team through this uncertainty, I have good news and hard news.

The hard news: The old playbook is useless.

The good news: The new playbook already exists. It’s rooted in decades of research on how adults actually develop, grow, and thrive through disruption. Most leaders just haven’t been taught it.

I’ve spent over three decades in and around organizations—23 years in Corporate America, over a decade coaching executives, and I’m currently pursuing doctoral studies in human development. What I’ve learned is this: the leaders who will successfully guide their teams through the next decade aren’t the ones with the best strategy decks. They’re the ones who understand how humans grow.

Vertical development isn't about adding skills—it's about expanding how we think.

The Shift from Horizontal to Vertical Development

Most organizations invest heavily in horizontal development—adding skills, knowledge, and competencies. Leadership training. Technical certifications. Another workshop on communication.

There’s nothing wrong with horizontal development. But it’s not enough for what’s coming.

Sustainable leadership capacity comes from vertical development: the expansion of how we think, not just what we know (Kegan, 1994; Petrie, 2014; Torbert & Associates, 2004). Vertical development is about increasing our ability to hold complexity, tolerate ambiguity, and take a perspective beyond our own worldview. As researchers at the Center for Creative Leadership have noted, these are meta-competencies—capacities that can’t be learned from books or traditional training programs (Petrie, 2014). It’s the difference between learning a new framework and fundamentally changing how you see problems.

Barrett Brown’s (2012) research on conscious leadership found that leaders operating at later stages of development were more effective at leading through complex change. They could hold multiple stakeholder perspectives simultaneously. They were less reactive under pressure. They could name what others couldn’t see.

This isn’t soft science. This is the edge your team needs.

As a leader, your job isn’t just to develop your people’s skills. It’s to create conditions where they can grow into more complex thinkers—including yourself.

What I Wish I Had Known 25 Years Ago

2005: I had no idea the lessons that were coming.

I’m going to tell you something I rarely say publicly.

For most of my corporate career, I kept my head down. I believed the narrative: work hard, deliver results, and opportunities will come. Organizational priorities heavily influenced me, and, regrettably, I didn’t invest enough time in building genuine relationships I could count on when things shifted.

I didn’t know how to ask for help. So I figured things out on my own—often the hard way.

I waited for organizational approval to fund my development. I let tuition reimbursement policies dictate my growth timeline, not realizing those dollars came with strings attached. I could have bet on myself sooner. I could have invested my own money in a coach instead of waiting for permission.

And I wasn’t bold enough about articulating what I brought to the table—inside or outside the organization. I had internalized the idea that self-promotion was distasteful, not realizing that clarity about your value isn’t arrogance. It’s advocacy.

If I could go back, I would stick to my vision earlier. I would build my success squad before I needed it. I would spend less time being a good soldier and more time being the architect of my own career.

I share this because your team members are making these same mistakes right now. And they’re looking to you for guidance you may not have received yourself.

What Your Team Needs You to Understand During Layoffs and Uncertainty

Here’s what the research and my experience tell me your people are navigating—whether they’ve told you or not:

They’re watching to see if it’s safe to invest in themselves. When you talk about development, do you mean it? Will they be penalized for taking time to learn? Do you model continuous growth yourself, or do you act as if you’ve already arrived?

They don’t know how to ask for help. Most high performers are rewarded early in their careers for figuring things out independently. Asking for support can feel like admitting weakness. You have to normalize it—loudly and repeatedly.

They’re waiting for permission that may never come. Permission to pursue a stretch assignment. Permission to speak up about what’s not working. Permission to bet on themselves. Some of your best people are quietly stagnating because they’re waiting for a green light you haven’t explicitly given.

They’re not managing their time for learning. The pace of change means continuous development is no longer optional. But most people haven’t built the muscle of carving out time to learn amidst the noise of daily execution. Help them protect that time—it matters—because it does.

The Leaders Who Will Thrive in 2026 and Beyond

The Center for Creative Leadership has studied leadership effectiveness for decades. One consistent finding: the best leaders are learning agile (Petrie, 2011). They extract lessons from experience, actively seek feedback, and adapt their approach based on new information.

But learning agility isn’t just an individual trait. It’s a culture you create.

In the next decade, the leaders who thrive will be the ones who:

Adopt technology with intention, not fear. AI is not coming for your job—but someone who knows how to use AI might be coming for your relevance. The leaders who invest in understanding and integrating these tools—not just for efficiency, but for augmenting human judgment—will have teams that outpace the competition. A wait-and-see attitude is a slow-motion exit strategy. Be on the ground floor for creating AI policies in your organization rather than scrambling to catch up later. How are you encouraging employees to use AI as a resource for brainstorming, research, and first drafts? Are you modeling that behavior yourself, or are you quietly hoping someone else figures it out first? The leaders who lean in now—experimenting, learning, and shaping how their teams engage with these tools—will define the standards everyone else follows.

Navigate political disruption without losing their center. Policies will shift, and leadership and organizational values will be under scrutiny. Your team will look to you to make sense of chaos without pretending you have all the answers. We saw this play out during COVID—leaders had to make real-time decisions about remote work, safety protocols, and employee well-being with incomplete information and constantly changing guidance. The leaders who thrived weren’t the ones who had all the answers. They were the ones who could hold uncertainty, communicate transparently, and adapt without abandoning their values. This requires what Kegan (1994) calls a “self-transforming mind”—the ability to hold your own perspective while genuinely entertaining others, especially when the stakes are high.

Develop themselves vertically, not just horizontally. The complexity leaders face can’t be solved with more information. It requires expanded capacity. I know—time is scarce, and competing priorities are real. It’s easy to push your own development to the bottom of the list when deadlines are pressing, and your team needs you. But here’s the truth: investing in your growth isn’t a luxury you get to when things slow down. Things won’t slow down. This is a proactive measure to ensure you and your teams remain competitive. Coaching, assessments, reflective practices—these aren’t indulgences. They’re the infrastructure for leading well. The leaders who carve out time for their own development now won’t be scrambling to catch up later.

Create psychological safety for growth. Your people won’t take risks, ask for help, or admit what they don’t know if they don’t trust that you’ll hold it with care. Psychological safety isn’t about being nice. It’s about being trustworthy enough that people can be honest with you. In my interview with Amira Barger, author of The Price of Nice: Why Comfort Keeps Us Stuck and Four Actions for Real Change, she made it plain: niceness is not benign or neutral—it actually costs us. The antithesis of nice isn’t mean, and it’s not even kind. It’s nerve—the audacity to challenge, disrupt, and ask harder questions. Leaders who confuse niceness with psychological safety end up prioritizing comfort over growth. Your job isn’t to make people feel good. It’s to make it safe enough for them to be honest, take risks, and push back when something isn’t working.

The leaders who thrive won't wait for permission to invest in themselves.

A Final Word: Bet on Yourself

If there’s one message I want leaders to internalize—and to pass on to their teams—it’s this:

Stop waiting for permission to invest in yourself.

Don’t wait for your organization to fund your coaching. Don’t wait for approval to pursue that certification. Don’t wait for someone to tap you on the shoulder and tell you you’re ready for more.

You are the asset. Act like it.

The leaders who will navigate the next decade successfully are the ones who understand that their development is their responsibility—and their team’s development is their legacy.

The playbook is there. The research is detailed. The only question is whether you’ll read it.

References

Barger, A. (2025). The price of nice: Why comfort keeps us stuck and four actions for real change. [Penguin Random House].

Brown, B. C. (2012). Conscious leadership for sustainability: How leaders with late-stage action logics design and engage in sustainability initiatives [Doctoral dissertation, Fielding Graduate University]. Academia.edu. https://www.academia.edu/760595/

Kegan, R. (1994). In over our heads: The mental demands of modern life. Harvard University Press. https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674445888

Petrie, N. (2011). Future trends in leadership development [White paper]. Center for Creative Leadership. https://cclinnovation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/future-trends-in-leadership-development.pdf

Petrie, N. (2014). Vertical leadership development–Part 1: Developing leaders for a complex world [White paper]. Center for Creative Leadership. https://www.ccl.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/VerticalLeadersPart1.pdf

Petrie, N. (2015). The how-to of vertical leadership development–Part 2 [White paper]. Center for Creative Leadership. https://www.ccl.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/verticalLeadersPart2.pdf

Torbert, W. R., & Associates. (2004). Action inquiry: The secret of timely and transforming leadership. Berrett-Koehler Publishers. https://www.bkconnection.com/books/title/action-inquiry

Simone E. Morris is an ICF Professional Certified Coach (PCC), doctoral student in Human Development at Fielding University, and founder of Simone Morris Enterprises. With 23+ years in Corporate America and nearly a decade of executive coaching experience, she helps leaders and organizations build workplace cultures where people thrive—even in uncertain times. She is the author of multiple books on career ownership and hosts The Power of Owning Your Career podcast, now in its 15th season.

What challenges is your organization navigating right now? I’d love to hear what’s keeping you up at night. Connect with me at simonemorrisenterprises.org or reach out on LinkedIn.

Disclosure: The author used AI tools for idea generation, article outlining, and drafting assistance. All content has been reviewed, refined, and approved by the author.